EXPLICIT BLOOM

13• Foolhardy

Nahla wasn't a book but Zaeem could certainly read her like an open one.

"You should eat" Nahla advised after a while as he did nothing but stare at his plate of food. "I can wait outside if I am making you uncomfortable" She added. "Angels stay when a person eats with the basmalah"

For some reason still unknown to her, Zaeem wouldn't directly reply to some of her sentences. He'd say sentences that sound like riddles and that made her to keep assuming what he meant. That time around, she assumed he told her to stay.

Nahla got engaged with her phone while Zaeem ate. Even though he said her presence was not a problem to him, she still decided not stare at him while he ate.

That felt more comfortable and modest to her.

Few minutes later, Nahla was jolted out of her own world by Zaeem's voice. "I need some water please" he requested. She moved closer to the water source and poured some of it out of its jug into a cup.

Nahla watched as he gulped down the whole cup of water, that was when she noticed the empty plate of food on his laps.

"You finished the whole plate?" Nahla asked because considering the fact that he was sick, she thought he wouldn't finish even half of it. But he did, in few minutes. "Yes. I remember myself to be devoted to food at all cost" Zaeem replied and Nahla chuckled.

"I'm glad you could remember that much about yourself. Speaking of which, there is something you should see" Nahla voiced and then reached out for her backpack. She opened it and rummaged through it before pulling out Zaeem's wallet then she passed it over to him.

"It's yours. Look through it with an open mind, perhaps you'll remember something and please don't force it" Nahla advised while Zaeem went ahead to open it.

The first thing he saw was a mini printed picture of two girls, one incredibly younger than the other and almost immediately, flashes started crowding his brain. He dropped the wallet and closed his eyes so he could see better but it became more crowded than it was before. And he also couldn't really understand anything from it, it played just like the dream he had the previous night.

Soon enough, he started having difficulties in breathing. He opened his eyes and started to try unbuttoning his shirt due to suffocation.

"Zaeem? Zaeem are you okay? What's wrong? Rabbul Ka'abah" Nahla kept on asking but he couldn't feel or hear anything. Her voice was feint and it kept becoming more distant with each passing second.

Nahla who was confused on what to do pressed the emergency button then she poured some water into the cup and splashed the whole of it over his face. She could not believe she did something as stupid as that but it was impulsive. Also, it worked because Zaeem started adjusting to his breathing pattern.

That was when the nurse and doctor ambled into the hospital room.

"What happened?" The doctor asked while patting on Zaeem's back gently with his hand. "I don't know, he suddenly started breathing abnormally" Nahla replied on the verge of tears.

She was certainly startled by what happened. Especially because she had seen her mother have those kind of attacks before. She was just a child, young and innocent, yet she experienced her father beating her mother at dawn making her to fall into those attacks at dusk.